"and can speak broad Scotch" – from Magheralin to Maryland, escaping with a man from Madagascar - 1739

St Mary's County on the western shore of Maryland is just across the Chesapeake Bay from Somerset County, the location of the first major Ulster-Scots community settlement in America, where the renowned Francis Makemie from Donegal became the minister in 1683.

Thomas Macoun was (very likely) from Magheralin / Maralin. He spoke “broad Scotch” and went to America as an indentured servant. In 1739 he, and a Black slave from Madagascar known as Robin, escaped together from their master’s plantation on the banks of the Potomac River, in a stolen boat with a pile of flamboyant clothes and a silver hilted sword.

This notice appeared in a few newspapers - if anyone in Pennsylvania found the two of them, Benjamin Franklin the printer was to be informed.

• the famous scientist John Macoun emigrated to Canada; his autobiography tells of the family's Scottish roots and of how they joined the resistance against King James II's army at The Break of Dromore in 1689. 

It would be worth fact-checking this interesting summary, from The Days of Makemie –

Much is said of his fairness in dealing with the Indians, but it is a fact, about which there has been no boasting, that our own province is nearly a half century ahead of Penn in setting the example. At St. Mary's no land was taken but was paid for, and the pleasantest relations of amity were established between the two races. The village of Yowacomaco was sold to the whites and became their capital, and there the English and Indians lived side by side in the rude huts constructed by savage hands, the one teaching the art of hunting the deer and planting the maize and preparing the succotash and hominy, the other teaching the lessons of civilized life and religion.